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Digital Wills
Jan. 7th, 2011 05:19 pmReading articles like this only makes me depressed, thinking that no one on-line would take much interest at all. Ugh.
Jan. 7th, 2011
I'm pretty bad at being a hipster. They dress how I'd like to, but I don't have enough style to do it. Also I'm not heroin chic enough to fit in the appropriate outfits.
I told my darling I wanted to go out to the coffeehouse a few blocks away, and once there, the girl at the counter asks what I want, and I tell him to go first. He says the exact thing I was thinking of, and I've learned by now that if I try to order something else so that we have more options and tastes to try, I will always make a bad choice and regret it, so without hesitating, I say "make that two", and we both opt for the whipped cream.
There are two girls sitting at the table adjacent to us; their cups are empty, only ice and straws. One of them is sitting up straight, reddish shirt, reddish hair, as though she were mentoring the brunette, who has her back to me, and kinda slumps, plays with her phone on the table. They're talking of typical college girl things; people they know, clothing boutiques, other serious things.
There are other people, but they're sitting too far away and I can't hear them over the sounds of our shared delights as we spoon smore "arsagaccinos", milk, chocolate, cream, toasted marshmallow. There is an elderly man sitting at the high bar, looking over a newspaper with a highlighter in hand, with some form of electronic media taking away his concentration momentarily. He must be doing some game in the newspaper, or looking for jobs. The New York Times is on sale, $2 today, $6 on Sunday. Would they chide me if I flipped through it without handing over any bills?
Why bother when there are original seasonal and greeting cards on a rack to spin through, a calendar of charitable journalism to feel uncomfortable with, or a drawer of games. Is this why hipsters are always talking about Scrabble? I thought it was because they are well-read and necessarily must brag about their vocabularies, but maybe it's just because they spend so much time in coffeehouses, where they might strike up a game with a random stranger, or group of friends after the gossip flow has ebbed.
The barristas are adorable, with their colored cords, and pixie haircuts. Sometimes I think of my darling as a pixie, although he isn't feminine in the slightest, and once, when I was feeling particularly heart-broken and lonely, there was a pixie girl on campus, that from a distance, I could nearly mistake for him. What would she have thought if I ran up to her and gave her a hug and a kiss? Just because someone is a hipster doesn't mean they're well-adjusted enough to be embraced by a stranger, or a girl.
The clientele that followed us are hipsters, too, or at least punk. Two girls come in, with hair cut to appropriate shortness, one with electric blue dyes. I think maybe they love each other; they have the certain closeness that I share with my darling.
The electric blue makes me think of the grocery store when I went a few days ago. In the spice and baking aisle, we passed a couple with electric blue and green hair, and punk clothing. I tried to give the kind of smile that says 'hey that's pretty cool' and not 'god you're so funny looking!' because that's really what I thought, but I'm not as talented with my expressions as my darling says one of his particular friends is. Looking at pictures of this guy, I would never have guessed that each expression was so exacting and predetermined, and I guess that's the sign of talent, making the unnatural seem natural. The only expression I can do is this wide ecstatic smile, which I practiced over webcam while skyping with my darling. When you smile so big that your face hurts, it stands to reason that your macular muscles would remember such positions.
He's tried to photograph me a lot since our time together is nearly up, but with my teeth being extracted, it's hard to open my mouth wide enough for the smiles that he wants to capture and take home with him, to get through the lonely months that guard against my graduation. But, I know how he feels, unconsciously afraid of keeping any memories solely in the care of the mind; digital memories never lie, and can be reread or re-regarded at any time, so long as one has an appropriate filing solution and can find the desired memory.
I don't store pictures of him in special "events" folders anymore. Being together is no longer an event; it's simply living.
I told my darling I wanted to go out to the coffeehouse a few blocks away, and once there, the girl at the counter asks what I want, and I tell him to go first. He says the exact thing I was thinking of, and I've learned by now that if I try to order something else so that we have more options and tastes to try, I will always make a bad choice and regret it, so without hesitating, I say "make that two", and we both opt for the whipped cream.
There are two girls sitting at the table adjacent to us; their cups are empty, only ice and straws. One of them is sitting up straight, reddish shirt, reddish hair, as though she were mentoring the brunette, who has her back to me, and kinda slumps, plays with her phone on the table. They're talking of typical college girl things; people they know, clothing boutiques, other serious things.
There are other people, but they're sitting too far away and I can't hear them over the sounds of our shared delights as we spoon smore "arsagaccinos", milk, chocolate, cream, toasted marshmallow. There is an elderly man sitting at the high bar, looking over a newspaper with a highlighter in hand, with some form of electronic media taking away his concentration momentarily. He must be doing some game in the newspaper, or looking for jobs. The New York Times is on sale, $2 today, $6 on Sunday. Would they chide me if I flipped through it without handing over any bills?
Why bother when there are original seasonal and greeting cards on a rack to spin through, a calendar of charitable journalism to feel uncomfortable with, or a drawer of games. Is this why hipsters are always talking about Scrabble? I thought it was because they are well-read and necessarily must brag about their vocabularies, but maybe it's just because they spend so much time in coffeehouses, where they might strike up a game with a random stranger, or group of friends after the gossip flow has ebbed.
The barristas are adorable, with their colored cords, and pixie haircuts. Sometimes I think of my darling as a pixie, although he isn't feminine in the slightest, and once, when I was feeling particularly heart-broken and lonely, there was a pixie girl on campus, that from a distance, I could nearly mistake for him. What would she have thought if I ran up to her and gave her a hug and a kiss? Just because someone is a hipster doesn't mean they're well-adjusted enough to be embraced by a stranger, or a girl.
The clientele that followed us are hipsters, too, or at least punk. Two girls come in, with hair cut to appropriate shortness, one with electric blue dyes. I think maybe they love each other; they have the certain closeness that I share with my darling.
The electric blue makes me think of the grocery store when I went a few days ago. In the spice and baking aisle, we passed a couple with electric blue and green hair, and punk clothing. I tried to give the kind of smile that says 'hey that's pretty cool' and not 'god you're so funny looking!' because that's really what I thought, but I'm not as talented with my expressions as my darling says one of his particular friends is. Looking at pictures of this guy, I would never have guessed that each expression was so exacting and predetermined, and I guess that's the sign of talent, making the unnatural seem natural. The only expression I can do is this wide ecstatic smile, which I practiced over webcam while skyping with my darling. When you smile so big that your face hurts, it stands to reason that your macular muscles would remember such positions.
He's tried to photograph me a lot since our time together is nearly up, but with my teeth being extracted, it's hard to open my mouth wide enough for the smiles that he wants to capture and take home with him, to get through the lonely months that guard against my graduation. But, I know how he feels, unconsciously afraid of keeping any memories solely in the care of the mind; digital memories never lie, and can be reread or re-regarded at any time, so long as one has an appropriate filing solution and can find the desired memory.
I don't store pictures of him in special "events" folders anymore. Being together is no longer an event; it's simply living.
